"You Will NOT Believe the Day I Had at Work"

"Bear one another's burdens" really has a lot more to do with forgiving one another's sins than it does with psycho-social "support."  And yet, today I am befuddled as to what people do when they live alone.

It was "one of those days" at work.  Boring and slow for three hours.  And then, wham!  Bam!  Ka-phlooey!  In the midst of the frenzied onslaught rush of the final half-hour, I had two naughty customers, asking for complex and/or not-kosher transactions.

The whole drive home, I was thinking of how Gary wasn't there to TALK TO about it.  I told myself that I shouldn't regale Maggie with all the gory details.  After all, she had to listen to way more than she bargained for when I arrived home from work on Thursday.  But I couldn't help spilling it all onto Maggie.  And then Katie came over to visit, and I rehashed some of it.

Gary comes home from work and often has to spill his day too.

This seems like a normal thing.  But what happens if you go home and there's nobody there to TELL?  Does it sit and eat away at your insides?  Do you phone a friend or your mom?  Do you tell the dog? 

Non-Dairy Brownies

If you can't have butter, and if you're trying to turn cocoa powder into fudgy brownies, this worked superbly!

13x9" recipe

1.5 cups white flour
2 cups sugar
10 Tbsp cocoa
1 tsp salt
1 cup coconut oil  or olive oil (solid, not melted)
4 eggs
2 tsp vanilla
1/2 cup nuts (if you're not allergic to them)


recipe for 28-35 sq-inches
(I used a a small serving dish for veggies.
A 6" skillet would also work.)
3/8 cup flour (that is, 1/4 cup + 2 Tbsp)
1/2 cup sugar
2.5 Tbsp cocoa powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 cup olive oil or coconut oil
1 egg
1/2 tsp vanilla


Put all ingredients into a bowl.  Mix.
Beat for another 3 minutes.
Bake a 13x9 at 350 for 30 minutes,
or the tiny pan for about 25 minutes.

Katie, even Dad liked these ... even with the coconutty taste.  The texture is just as nice as when made with butter.  They're not crumbly.  They're not dry.  Maggie told me not to eat the whole pan. I didn't -- not the whole pan.  I'm still thinking I should give this recipe a try with chilled olive oil, but that experiment hasn't happened yet.

Update from the following day:
We experimented with olive oil instead of coconut oil.  The brownies turned out even better!  I measured the olive oil, poured it into a small bowl, and then refrigerated it until it was a soft solid.   The brownies had a lovely fudgy texture, but without the coconut taste of yesterday's experiment.

Babushkas

I think those Russian women had it figured out.  They got old and wore their babushkas.  Who would see their thinning hair turning grey?  It was covered by the ever-present scarf.  They didn't have to figure out what to do with their old-lady hair.

Somehow, I suspect wearing a head scarf at work would not be part of "professional attire."


(Can you guess that I'm still trying to figure out whether to let the hair grow long again, keep it as is, or try something even shorter?!!)

The Devil's Temptation of Jesus

Pastor pointed out this morning:  
In Luke 4, the devil quotes Psalm 91 to Jesus, saying that He can jump off the roof of the temple because, after all, the angels will guard Him and keep Him safe.  But then, later in chapter 4, when the folks of Nazareth are all hacked off at Jesus for preaching gracious words and decide to throw Him off the cliff, He just walks away from them.  How?  Who knows?  But the angels did guard Him in all His ways lest He dash His foot against a stone.

Saturday

Maggie and I decided to take Gary to Discovery World before our membership runs out.  I love the aquarium there. 

Things I noticed:
~ I hate how tired I get at museums these days.  The kids and I used to enjoy spending a whole long luxurious day at a museum.  Now, two hours and I'm done.
~ When we walked past the heat sensor, my nose was blue.  Seriously?  Maggie's and Gary's noses were, y'know, alive and warm.  My nose showed as blue (thus, COLD) as my glasses.   Gary put his hand on my nose and said, "Oh, wow, your nose IS cold!"  Also, my finger with nerve damage and poor circulation showed bluer than the rest of my fingers.
~ We went in "the Hive" (which shows 3-D images-in-motion of different things) to see the Roman Colosseum.  The narrator explained how, with these computer models, it's better than being there in real life.  The reasoning that a) we can replicate what it was like originally instead of what it is now, and b) we're not adding wear-&-tear to the ruins that remain.  Okay, I see the point.  But c'mon, "better than being there in real life"???
~ I spent more time noticing women's hair styles than I spent investigating science.
~ Children at the museum seem more well-behaved on Saturdays (with their parents) than on weekdays (with their school classes).


While downtown, we used a gift certificate to eat at Buca di Beppo.  Phenomenal food!  What surprised us was the decorating.  So many pictures of Italian guys, singers and ball-players and actors and the pope.  But also photos of women that we were embarrassed to see: boobs, boobs, cleavage, and boobs.  Yikes!  The grievous part of the dining experience was that we left our doggie-bags on the table.  Argh!  That food was so awesome, and we didn't bring the leftovers home.  Woe!


I fell asleep on the couch by 8:00.  When I crawled into bed, I set the alarm for 7:15 "just in case."  I knew I'd be up early.  I wasn't; the alarm woke me.  We had to skip first service and go to late.  Maggie caught the stomach-ick that has been going around; she was up sick through the night and stayed home from church.

As nice as our day together was, I'm thinking that it was more than our bodies were ready to take.

That's pitiful.